Preparation of bimetal Co-Ni supported on Mg-Al oxide for chemocatalytic upgrading of tailored fermentation products to energy intensive fuels

The great challenge in the aldol condensation of tailored fermentation products(acetone-butanol-ethanol,ABE)into energy intensive fuels is to develop a suitable catalyst with high activity and low-cost.In this study,Co,Ni,and Co-Ni supported on Mg-Al oxide catalysts were prepared and their pore diameters were enlarged via adding active carbon as a hard template into Mg-Al hydrotalcite.During the aldol condensation reaction,the catalyst activity was enhanced after enlarging the pore diameter and Co-Ni bimetal supported catalyst presented the highest activity,which was resulted from that the electron transfer between Co and Ni in Co-Ni alloy enhanced the dehydrogenation activity and large pore lowered the mass transfer resistance.After optimizing the reaction conditions,acetone conversion and the total selectivity of C_(5)-C_(11)desired products in the aldol condensation of ABE reached up to 76%and 90%,respectively.The stability study showed that the activity was decreased with the increase of reaction number because of the oxidation of metallic Co and Ni,but this could be solved via a simple hydrogen reduction method.